Abstract

There has been considerable interest in using impurity dopants in silicon, such as boron and phosphorus, since it was demonstrated that such materials can show emission in the THz region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The measuredtemperature dependence of these transitions in this letter shows that the most optimistic maximum operating temperature of such an impurity-based laser is 90 K. In a real device with current flowing and associated Joule heating, the actual operating range is likely to be much narrower and it is therefore unlikely that such a device would have a maximum operating temperature above 40 K.